Google plans to unveil an open API for tapping into social networking sites, even without the support of the two biggest players.
Google hopes to increase its slice of the social networking pie tomorrow with an announcement of OpenSocial, an API that taps into social networking sites like LinkedIn, Hi5, Friendster and its own Orkut. The API is intended to do for these sites what Facebook's API has done for it: to increase the reach and penetration of social networking into users' lives, enhancing the availability and immediacy of social networking services.
Google's API is positioned as the open alternative to the current API of Facebook and the planned API of MySpace—Google's interface will span multiple sites and services.
Google may be a bit late to this party, however. The Facebook API has already enabled the creation of over 7,000 independent applications tied into the site. MySpace has said that it, too, will offer an API along the lines of Facebook's, and with MySpace pulling in by far the largest share of social networking traffic, the impact of its API could be huge.
This post is quoted from http://www.ddj.com/web-development/202800678?cid=RSSfeed_DDJ_All
